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Luke's comment about the look of new forums made me think of one request:

Please somehow avoid what seems to be the flavor of the month regarding look/style in having solid, bright white backgrounds with black text. The fact that AO has a grey background, colored text in many places, and light blue backgrounds in the text blocks means that I can comfortably read it. All of the "new" web forums I have encountered give me a headache after less than five minutes of struggling to look at them.

Thanks for listening, and thank you to everyone who contributed to keeping the lights on.

A new, cooler calendar!

We have a 2006 calendar that goes up to Jan 2007. I say we add a 2013 calendar & maybe a 2014. I would also like pictures of scantily clad women straddling much larger than real life Automags, with big live lions on either side for each month.

Luke's comment about the look of new forums made me think of one request:

Please somehow avoid what seems to be the flavor of the month regarding look/style in having solid, bright white backgrounds with black text. The fact that AO has a grey background, colored text in many places, and light blue backgrounds in the text blocks means that I can comfortably read it. All of the "new" web forums I have encountered give me a headache after less than five minutes of struggling to look at them.

Thanks for listening, and thank you to everyone who contributed to keeping the lights on.

Thats a good point - lets keep AO AO while we are at it

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. Its not" - Dr Suess

The ban list - lets consider getting rid of it and "welcoming everyone back" so to speak. Wipe the slate clean and start over.

I know when it was decided to publically post the ban list it was needed. There were concerns about how it made people feel and if it was welcoming but it was needed. Now it is virtually unused. Its necessity is in question.

I know I don't chat much on the forums (spending most of the time either lurking or in the BST), but a couple more thoughts reading some of the replies:

"badges", "medals", "rep points", etc.: After browsing PBN for a few minutes to see what people were actually talking about regarding these items, they all just seem like a bunch of clutter that don't really mean anything. Folks time and thoughts, posted to the forum as well as playing/working with folks in the real world, do a pretty good job of teaching folks who is who and who the "good guys" are, I think? I feel that the lack of online things that either promote little cliques or try to segregate folks (in what appears to me to be an already pretty small community) really don't add anything positive, but rather promote an "insiders only" kind of face that isn't very welcoming to new people or casual readers. We do want to find more new, friendly, enthusiastic people to talk to, no?

Signature lines: I understand and respect the idea of these. What bothers me about them, and why I actually like that there are none here is twofold: One, not having every post add at least 2-3 lines of text (let alone graphics, animations, jarring text colors and font sizes. . .) means that I can read more posts per screen view on my monitor - meaning I can actually get to more of the CONTENT of the posts without having to wade through the window dressing. Two, correct me if I'm wrong, but generally all I see out of signature lines is one of two things - either some generally inappropriate/impolite/off-topic rant/shout that doesn't really add anything to whatever conversation is going on, or what effectively becomes a non-stop advertisement circumventing any sort of etiquette asking for business to be done solely in the BST section of a forum. Again, it may just be the sample set I looked through, but neither of these sounds like a good idea to have. Two additional thoughts on this - first, if these signature lines can be turned on/off in user preferences, no harm no foul - no reason for everyone to not do as they please. Secondly, I see the value to providing a quick link to folks' feedback threads in doing business. Maybe a more elegant solution would be to either add a link to these threads in the first post of a thread created in the BST when selling something, or alternately, maybe add the option for a shortcut to the feedback thread in the drop down box that comes up when clicking on a username in a thread/post?

Avatars: My feelings on these are pretty much the same as signature lines. Although some folks after a while (assuming they don't change them every other day) get to be recognized by their avatars, those few people aside, the rest of them are just not really relevant in contributing anything constructive to a conversation on the forum. There are plenty of places online to watch tiny flash animations, view pictures that are all but soft-core pornography (100 pixels big no less!), and have othersuch rotating/flashing/jarring graphics drive one to distraction. Now, I'm not suggesting that this place be all business, all the time, but it seems the flavor of the community created by those who are here quite often has a bit more refinement than that. . . a (little?) bit more grown-up, adult kind of vibe, if that makes sense?

Sorry for the long text blocks, just had a few minutes and thought I would put ideas out there while still fresh in mind.

I get your rant, and I'd agree with some of it. But it's centered around when people are just doing it wrong. The main reason I'd vote for signature lines is simply because most BST transactions go down via PM, and it's REALLY handy to have a link to your feedback in a sig line so that with each PM the recipient has an ability to just click on it and get there. It's much better than having to go back and search for the sale thread again, or searching through the feedback forum.

And the avatars... if we're grown up around here, then you could certainly expect the type of avatars that are not annoying, and that stay constant so that people are quickly and easily recognized by them. Avatars that I wouldn't want my kids to see or which induce epileptic seizures can simply be nuked by the mods/admins.

But my point is that if we start throwing cold water on every new thing simply because we can find one example of somebody making it annoying, we'll be left without any content whatsoever. Should we have to forego these conveniences simply because some people exploit them for annoyance? Or can we just clean up the annoyances without throwing out the conveniences? My thought is that if this is a mature forum, then the efforts required to police these kinds of things should be minimal.

Justus, agreed that all these things SHOULD be able to be taken in and used as intended. . .

. . . and I hope I didn't come off as a rant, but rather just some (maybe long-winded) constructive input. I guess I just don't want a nice, suburban neighborhood to turn into the Las Vegas strip (not that the strip doesn't have its own unique charm for folks into that sort of thing ).

i do like them mainly because of the links to sale threads aswell as feedback. sometimes its a pain to find especially when someone hasnt sold something in months or more.
not really crazy about the huge banners some people run in there sigs but im sure there will be a way to limit those.

feedback

i do like how pbn has the feedback rating posted in the top right of every post. it makes me feel more comfortable to know that someone has 0 negative feedback. that doesnt mean im not cautious still but knowing that 300 postive to 0 negative.is much faster than reading 8 pages of feedback to figure out if the person is going to possibly screw you.

Rep points make my head hurt.. I frequent a few other forums and TBH I still don't get them and they seem like a bit of an epeen generator. I know some forums have a 'supporting member' tag that has some weefle benefits like oversize PM boxes and such and a little 'flag' under your name to indicate you contribute... but I don't think people need to be hit over the head.

I do think selling limited/tasteful ad space is not so bad an idea. I am sure there are manufacturers that would be happy to take a little space and help things sail along.

I've always liked the more mature vibe here... since I have come back it seems a bit 'colder' than I remember if that makes sense, but it still seems mature. I think capturing the essence of that is key.

I think just based on the number of people who stepped up for AGD themed merch to save the site, the CafePress idea is a no-brainer as well.

I'm glad the community came together to save this, and I think that's what is going to keep it strong.

Sigs: I like sigs within limits. I also like the idea of sigs being allowed once per user per thread to prevent their overuse.

I do not like the new "fancy" feedback systems like on PBN. I like the feedback program we have now. I would like to see a way of making the feedback threads easier - perhaps just the user name as the title.